By George Odok
The 2001/2002 Millennial Class of the Faculty of Medicine, University of Calabar, has renovated and furnished a lecture hall for medical students fitted with a smart learning interactive board, renovated and upgraded toilet facilities and landscaped the courtyard of the Faculty of Medicine, as part of their commitment to pitching in and helping to improve the learning environment of their alma mata.
Representative of the class, Mbang Kooffreh-Ada, a Lecturer/Consultant Gastroenterologist of the University of Calabar, said that the gesture was to help promote smart teaching and learning in the College of Medicine. She also added that the set came together two years ago to carry out a needs assessment in the College of Medicine with a view to identify the immediate requirements of the faculty and fashion out ways of giving back to the faculty.
“The faculty desired a classroom that could accommodate up to 100 students and above. The current Dean of the faculty, Prof. Ngim Ngim, suggested that beyond just providing the faculty with a basic projector, we should go ahead and source for an interactive learning board that not only projects images but also enable lecturers to demonstrate real-time on the board. We started a fund raising despite the COVID-19 pandemic and we were able to raise a modest amount of money for the renovation work. This is the first of its kind in the Faculty of Medicine and we look forward to using this state–of- the- art classroom to teach our medical students and hope that in doing so, it would create an ambient environment for them to learn,” she said.
In their goodwill message “The Millennial Class of 2001/2002 expressed their gratitude to the College of Medical Sciences and the entire University of Calabar community and further encouraged the university to maintain their standards and continue to seek upgrades in the campus. Additionally, other Alumni of the Medical school were enjoined to help place the College of Medical Science, University of Calabar on the world map of excellence.
In her remarks, Vice-Chancellor of the University, Florence Obi, who commissioned the renovated facilities, commended the 2001/2002 alumni set for giving back to the university. She called on other alumni to emulate the donors, who she described as being a relatively younger set. She further described the initiative as the “first of its kind” in the Faculty of Medicine.
“For me, this is a clear way of appreciating the lecturers who taught them as undergraduates. If the lecturers had extorted monies from them or had been vindictive and delayed them unnecessarily, they would never have thought of this. This is exactly what we talk about every day concerning teachers-students relationship; because the students will always remember,” she noted.
